Sunday, December 29, 2013

As I said above -- sorry for my slow posting. I know this is not the most active blog on line ------ but --- this time it has nothing to do with my disgust with our politics, it's about a flooded house, my issues with my insurance company and problems with the folks who we contracted with to do the dry-out, demolition, and reconstruction. Neither happy, involved, nor committed at this time -- it's currently about survival.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Does anyone remember "The Dixie Chicks"? Remember how the right wing savaged them when they DARED criticize G.W. Bush in London? Remember how the right wing said freedom of speech means you can say it, but you can't control how folks react? Remember how they ruined careers when anyone DARED to speak out? Remember what they did to Bill Maher?

NOW, they say we have no right to react to the rantings of a phoney "redneck". In fact, the very same folks who DEFENDED virtual censorship of an independent singing group say a NETWORK with contractual rights has no right to discipline an employee. Try that with YOUR BOSS and claim "freedom of speech", esp. in a Southern State where "at will employment" is the rule.

Those "poor" Duck Dynasty folks, those scripted, real funny folks, who are just your typical down-to-earth millionaires, who appeared to be just plain old YUPPIES before they became a parody of real "rednecks", a parody of hard working folks who just dream of being "Duck Call Millionaires".

May the Robertson's rot in whatever place is reserved for all the phonies we see on "Reality TV"

Thursday, December 19, 2013

From Robert Reich - please follow link to original.
------------------------------------------------------------http://robertreich.org/

It’s the season to show concern for the less fortunate among us. We should also be concerned about the widening gap between the most fortunate and everyone else.

Although
it’s still possible to win the lottery (your chance of winning $636
million in the recent Mega Millions sweepstakes was one in 259 million),
the biggest lottery of all is what family we’re born into. Our life
chances are now determined to an unprecedented degree by the wealth of
our parents.

That’s not always been the case. The faith that
anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption,
hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the
American Dream.

And equal opportunity was the heart of the
American creed. Although imperfectly achieved, that ideal eventually
propelled us to overcome legalized segregation by race, and to guarantee
civil rights. It fueled efforts to improve all our schools and widen
access to higher education. It pushed the nation to help the unemployed,
raise the minimum wage, and provide pathways to good jobs. Much of this
was financed by taxes on the most fortunate.

But for more than
three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today
for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy
adult. Or even for a middle-class child to become wealthy.

The
major reason is widening inequality. The longer the ladder, the harder
the climb. America is now more unequal that it’s been for eighty or more
years, with the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of all
developed nations. Equal opportunity has become a pipe dream.

Rather
than respond with policies to reverse the trend and get us back on the
road to equal opportunity and widely-shared prosperity, we’ve spent much
of the last three decades doing the opposite.

Taxes have been
cut on the rich, public schools have deteriorated, higher education has
become unaffordable for many, safety nets have been shredded, and the
minimum wage has been allowed to drop 30 percent below where it was in
1968, adjusted for inflation.

Congress has just passed a tiny
bipartisan budget agreement, and the Federal Reserve has decided to wean
the economy off artificially low interest rates. Both decisions reflect
Washington’s (and Wall Street’s) assumption that the economy is almost
back on track.

But it’s not at all back on the track it was on more than three decades ago. It’s certainly not on track for the
record 4 million Americans now unemployed for more than six months, or
for the unprecedented 20 million American children in poverty (we now
have the highest rate of child poverty of all developed nations other
than Romania), or for the third of all working Americans whose jobs are
now part-time or temporary, or for the majority of Americans whose real
wages continue to drop.

How can the economy be back on track when
95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have
gone to the richest 1 percent?

The underlying issue is a moral one: What do we owe one another as members of the same society?

Conservatives
answer that question by saying it’s a matter of personal choice – of
charitable works, philanthropy, and individual acts of kindness joined
in “a thousand points of light.”

But that leaves out what we
could and should seek to accomplish together as a society. It neglects
the organization of our economy, and its social consequences. It
minimizes the potential role of democracy in determining the rules of
the game, as well as the corruption of democracy by big money. It
overlooks our strivings for social justice.

In short, it ducks the meaning of a decent society.

Last
month Pope Francis wondered aloud whether “trickle-down theories, which
assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will
inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and
inclusiveness…”. Rush Limbaugh accused the Pope of being a Marxist for
merely raising the issue.

But the question of how to bring about
greater justice and inclusiveness is as American as apple pie. It has
animated our efforts for more than a century – during the Progressive
Era, the New Deal, the Great Society, and beyond — to make capitalism
work for the betterment of all rather merely than the enrichment of a
few.

The supply-side, trickle-down, market-fundamentalist views
that took root in America in the early 1980s got us fundamentally off
track.

To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward
mobility we once considered normal will require another era of
fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy

I spent last week trooping through North Lawndale, on the West Side
of Chicago, with the Atlantic's video team. We spent much of Friday with
some positive folks over at the Better Boys Foundation (BBF)
in K-Town. Then we went outside to get some sense of the neighborhood.
I've spent a lot of time in North Lawndale over the past year. It is one
of the roughest neighborhoods in Chicago. It is also achingly
beautiful. Wide boulevards cut through the neighborhood, the old Sears
building looms in the distance, and the great greystones
mark many of the blocks. If you stand at the corner of Springfield and
Ogden, as I have, right next to the Lawndale Christian Health Center
across from Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, you can see the great wealth of
Chicago, indeed the great wealth of America, looming over all those who
long toiled to make it so.
That Friday, it snowed all day and we walked the blocks, Sam, Kasia,
Paul and me, with our guides, running mostly on the odd joy one gets
imbibes from the kind of exploration that should be what journalism is
about. Towards the end of the afternoon we were standing on a corner
shooting one of our hosts. Kids were walking home. We were standing on a
street designated as a route for Chicago's Safe Passage program.
Volunteers, bundled like scientists of the arctic, stood across the way,
nodding as children passed.
The afternoon was quiet. The street-lights were just beginning to
flirt. There was no sun. A group of older boys, with no books, came
aimlessly down the street. Our host called one of them over and hassled
him for not having stopped by BBF recently. BBF is a fortress in a
section of this long warred upon section of the city. Kids can go to BBF
to read, make beats, make video or play table-top hockey. The
conversation between our host and the kid was familiar to me. It was the
way men addressed me, as a child, when they were trying to save my
life. Aimlessness is the direct path to oblivion for black boys. Occupy
the child till somewhere around 25, till he passes out of his hot years,
and you may see him actually become something.
Catercorner to the volunteers of Safe Passage, two cops sat in an
SUV, snug and warm. Our video team was shooting the conversation between
our host and the kid. One of the cops rolled down his window and
yelled, "Excuse me you need to take your cameras off this corner. It's
Safe Passage."
I didn't know anything about Safe Passage
and the law. If the program prohibits video footage on a public street,
I haven't been able to document any record of it. But it is police,
after all, which is to say humans empowered by the state with the right
to mete out violence as he sees fit. We backed up a bit. Our host kept
talking. The cops yelled out again. "You need to move, bud. This is Safe
Passage." At this point our host yelled back and contentious back and
forth began. Things calmed down when one of our cameramen walked down
the street with our host to get a few different shots.
A few months ago, on one of my other trips to Chicago, I was at a
dinner with a group of wonks. The wonks were upset that the community,
and its appointed represenatives, would not support mandatory minimums
for gun charges. I--shamefully I now think--agreed with them. It's not
simply that I now think I was wrong, it's that I forgot my role. I mean
no disrespect to my hosts. But whenever reformers convene for a nice
dinner and good wine, a writer should never allow himself to get too
comfortable.
One of my friends, who grew up on the South Side, and was the only
other black male at the table, was the only one who disagreed. His
distrust of the justice system was too high.Perhaps this is why:

During his more than 30
years behind bars, Stanley Wrice insisted he was innocent, that Chicago
police had beat him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit. On
Wednesday, he walked out of an Illinois prison a free man, thanks to a
judge's order that served as a reminder that one of the darkest chapters
in the city's history is far from over...

Wrice, who was sentenced to
100 years behind bars for a 1982 sexual assault, is among more than two
dozen inmates — most of them black men — who have alleged they were
tortured by officers under the command of disgraced former Chicago
police Lt. Jon Burge in a scandal that gave the nation's third-largest
city a reputation as haven for rogue cops and helped lead to the
clearing of Illinois' death row. Some of the prisoners have been freed;
some are still behind bars, hoping to get the kind of hearing that Wrice
got that eventually led to his freedom.

The scandal of Jon Burge,
which will trouble Chicago police for many years to come, is the worst
of something many black folks feels when interacting with police in any
city. Police address us with aggression, and their default setting is
escalation. De-escalation is for black civilians.
When the officer wanted us to move, there was a very easy way to
handle the situation. You step our your car. You introduce yourself. You
ask questions about what we're doing. If we are breaking the law, you
ask us to move. If we are not breaking the law and simply making your
life hard, we are likely to move anyway. You are the power.
The cop did not speak to us as though he were human. He spoke to us
like a gangster, like he was protecting his block. He was solving no
crime. He was protecting no lives. He was holding down his corner. He
didn't even bother with a change of uniform. An occupied SUV, parked at
an intersection, announces its masters intentions.
It was only a second day there, and our first real one out on the
street. It only took that short period to run into trouble. I was
worried about the expensive equipment. But it was the conventions of
community that protected us. People would walk up and ask us what we
were doing. I would tell them we were shooting the neighborhood, or had
just finished interviewing some elder--Mr. Ross, Mrs. Witherspoon--and
they would smile. "So Mr. Ross is famous, huh?"
No such social lubricant exists for the police. If you are young and
black and live in North Lawndale, if you live in Harlem, if you live in
any place where people with power think young black boys aren't being
stopped and frisked enough, then what happened to us is not a single
stand-out incident. It is who the police are. Indeed they are likely a
good deal worse.
What people who have never lived in these neighborhoods must get, is
that, like the crooks, killers, and gangs, the police are another
violent force that must be negotiated and dealt with. But unlike the
gangs, the violence of the police is the violence of the state, and thus
unaccountable to North Lawndale. That people who represent North
Lawndale laugh at the idea of handing over more tools of incarceration
to law enforcement is unsurprising.
As we were finishing up, the officer who yelled at us got out the car and asked for the driver of our vehicle. It wasn't me.
"I happened to notice your sticker is expired," the officer said, handing a ticket to Kasia.
"It's a rental," she replied.
"Well give it to them," he told her walking away. "They'll know what to do with it."
The cop got back in his heated car. On the other corner, Safe Passage stood there, awaiting children, huddling in the cold.

It’s charity time, and not just because the
holiday season reminds us to be charitable. As the tax year draws to a
close, the charitable tax deduction beckons.
America’s wealthy are its largest beneficiaries. According to the Congressional Budget Office,
$33 billion of last year’s $39 billion in total charitable deductions
went to the richest 20 percent of Americans, of whom the richest 1
percent reaped the lion’s share.
The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence
they’re contributing as much to the nation’s well-being as they did
decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in
taxes. Think again.
Undoubtedly, super-rich family foundations, such as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, are doing a lot of good. Wealthy philanthropic
giving is on the rise, paralleling the rise in super-rich giving that
characterized the late nineteenth century, when magnates (some called
them “robber barons”) like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller
established philanthropic institutions that survive today.
But a large portion of the charitable deductions now claimed by
America’s wealthy are for donations to culture palaces – operas, art
museums, symphonies, and theaters – where they spend their leisure time
hobnobbing with other wealthy benefactors.
Another portion is for contributions to the elite prep schools and
universities they once attended or want their children to attend. (Such
institutions typically give preference in admissions, a kind of
affirmative action, to applicants and “legacies” whose parents have been
notably generous.)
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League are worthy
institutions, to be sure, but they’re not known for educating large
numbers of poor young people. (The University of California at Berkeley,
where I teach, has more poor students eligible for Pell Grants than the
entire Ivy League put together.) And they’re less likely to graduate
aspiring social workers and legal defense attorneys than aspiring
investment bankers and corporate lawyers.
I’m all in favor of supporting fancy museums and elite schools, but
face it: These aren’t really charities as most people understand the
term. They’re often investments in the life-styles the wealthy already
enjoy and want their children to have as well. Increasingly, being rich
in America means not having to come across anyone who’s not.
They’re also investments in prestige – especially if they result in
the family name engraved on a new wing of an art museum, symphony hall,
or ivied dorm.
It’s their business how they donate their money, of course. But not
entirely. As with all tax deductions, the government has to match the
charitable deduction with additional tax revenues or spending cuts;
otherwise, the budget deficit widens.
In economic terms, a tax deduction is exactly the same as government
spending. Which means the government will, in effect, hand out $40
billion this year for “charity” that’s going largely to wealthy people
who use much of it to enhance their lifestyles.
To put this in perspective, $40 billion is more than the federal
government will spend this year on Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (what’s left of welfare), school lunches for poor kids, and
Head Start, put together.
Which raises the question of what the adjective “charitable” should
mean. I can see why a taxpayer’s contribution to, say, the Salvation
Army should be eligible for a charitable tax deduction. But why,
exactly, should a contribution to the Guggenheim Museum or to Harvard
Business School?
A while ago, New York’s Lincoln Center held a fund-raising gala
supported by the charitable contributions of hedge fund industry
leaders, some of whom take home $1 billion a year. I may be missing
something but this doesn’t strike me as charity, either. Poor New
Yorkers rarely attend concerts at Lincoln Center.
What portion of charitable giving actually goes to the poor? The Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews looked into this, and the best he could come up with was a 2005 analysis
by Google and Indiana University’s Center for Philanthropy showing that
even under the most generous assumptions only about a third of
“charitable” donations were targeted to helping the poor.
At a time in our nation’s history when the number of poor Americans
continues to rise, when government doesn’t have the money to do what’s
needed, and when America’s very rich are richer than ever, this doesn’t
seem right.
If Congress ever gets around to revising the tax code, it might consider limiting the charitable deduction to real charities.

Martin Ssempa, the virulently anti-gay Ugandan pastor praised
by American Religious Right leaders, is an active Twitter user. Among
his recent gems, he has denounced the phrase “gay people” as an
“intellectual fraud.” (He prefers, “people who ‘do’ sodom vice acts.”)
He tweeted at Rev. Jesse Jackson that “Equality was hijacked by Gays.”
He griped about marriage equality in Hawaii and praised anti-equality
protesters in Taiwan.
Ssempa also promotes the work of other professional haters. He
recently put in a plug for anti-gay extremist Scott Lively’s book
“Redeeming the Rainbow.” And on December 6 he repeatedly tweeted a link
to a video “lecture” by Ayo Kimathi, promoter of a militant black
supremacist website called “War on the Horizon.”

Months earlier, Kimathi had been placed on leave from his Department
of Homeland Security job after the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed the hate-filled thrust of his website. In mid-November, Alex Seitz-Wald of National Journal published an article, “DHS Still Hasn’t Fired Black Supremacist Who Called for Mass Murder of Whites.”

Coincidentally, Ssempa’s multiple December 6 tweets promoting
Kimathi’s “Effeminization of the African Male Pt 1 – History of
Homosexuality,” came on the last day Kimathi was a DHS employee.

Perhaps Ssempa was attracted by the virulently anti-European tone of
Kimathi’s presentation. After all, Ssempa has been tweeting angrily
about Europeans promoting LGBT equality as a human rights issue. Sample
tweet: “Who gives the European the right to decide for Africans, that a
human (‘sodom) vice is now human right?

The video
Ssempa promoted is a lecture by Kimathi in which he explains that the
term “white sex” is a catch-all for rape, perversion, homosexuality,
pedophilia, and bestiality. He says it is a “filthy notion” that all
people are alike under the skin. Kimathi describes Christopher Columbus
as a “flaming homosexual,” child molester, and “small hat.” Kimathi says
“small hat” refers to “whites who commonly refer to themselves as
Jews.” They are, he says, “the worst of the worst of the Europeans. The
worst white group of all white groups is these whites who call
themselves Jews.”

This from "The Rude Pundit" - please read. Follow link to original.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com/

Denial of Medicaid Expansion Is a Job Killer:
(This one is clean for the kiddies.)

A just-released report
from the Commonwealth Fund shows how ideology has trumped common sense
when it comes to the states that have refused to expand Medicaid under
the Affordable Care Act (aka "Pearl Harbor + The Civil War x Pol Pot to
the power of Manson"). For, if you will remember, what the cruel Obama
administration wishes to do is give states 100% of the funding for the
first three years and, phased down over five years, about 90% thereafter
to get health coverage for their not-quite-as-desperate poor, those in
that not-exactly sweet spot between current Medicaid guidelines and qualifying for the insurance exchanges.

What are Bobby Jindal, Rick Scott, and other GOP governors forgoing?
"The value of new federal funds flowing annually to states that choose
to participate in the Medicaid expansion in 2022 will be, on average,
about 2.35 times as great as expected federal highway funds going to
state governments in that year and over one-quarter as large as expected
defense procurement contracts to states."

How about putting that in dollars? So, for instance, the Rude Pundit's
stupid home state of Louisiana would, if Jindal wasn't such a jerk
about it, get $2.3 billion in 2022 for Medicaid expansion. For highway
funds, the state gets $900 million. One of those numbers is bigger.

In that fantasy year of 2022, it would cost the state $280 million to
cover over 240,000 Louisianians. In other words, the state would get
roughly $9 for every $1 it spent. In otherer words, as a report in February from Family USA, the state is saying, "Hasta la vista" to jobs, too.

Remember how much Republicans want to talk about jobs except when it
comes to actually creating jobs? Remember how Ted Cruz goes on and on about the "job-killing" Obamacare? Yeah, not so much.

Because, see, expansion of Medicaid in Louisiana is projected to create
15,600 jobs. Why? Because there's a couple of billion dollars involved.
And what's even awesomer is that a chunk of that money will be spent on
wages. The Rude Pundit is no high-falutin' economist, but he's pretty
sure that means the wages will be taxed and spent, which is taxed also.
That seems like a pretty sweet deal all around.

Now, can someone explain how this is any different, truly, than, say, a
defense contract? Because it's all just federal money heading to
localities that then turn around and create jobs doing something for the
citizens of the nation.

Why do you think GOP governors like Rick Snyder and John Kasich have
jumped on the expansion train? Compassion? Hell no. It's for that cash
infusion at a time when the irrational budget sequester has circumcised
the budgets of the states with no hope in the near future of spending
returning to its pre-Tea Party levels.

Bottom line: If someone offered you $900 for the sweet price of $100,
you'd be a total jackass not to take it. Thus we know why Gov. Bobby
Jindal won't.

Once again I searched the far flung interwebs, those famed intertubes, to bring you fresh news. I actually found it. After being sick, after barfing, retching, rolfing, pukeing, I decided that THERE'S SOME STRANGE SHIT GOING ON.

Friday, November 29, 2013

The first day of Hanukkah fell on our USA Thanksgiving Holiday this year. It very rarely comes this early. Here's a cartoon from "As Time Goes By" to commemorate it. Please follow link to original:http://www.timegoesby.net/

In what seems like a single step away from advocating that we take
kids away from their single moms by force, a conservative Christian
leader is urging them to give up their children voluntarily.

A conservative Christian leader says single moms should surrender their kids to Christian homes with two parents.

Right Wing Watch reports that Southern Baptist leader Richard Land is calling on single mothers to put up their kids for adoption so that Christian households with two parents can raise them.
In a November 23rd article published on The Christian Post,
Land urges single mothers across the nation to stop being selfish and
hand their kids over to good Christian parents so they can be raised
properly, the way he thinks God intended.

“Keeping the baby is almost never preferable to allowing a
baby to be adopted into a solid, faithful Christian home,” Land claims.
“A single mother who keeps her baby is quite often denying that baby
the father that God wants for that baby, and every baby, to have.
Furthermore, in most circumstances, keeping the baby circumscribes and
forecloses both the mother’s and the baby’s economic futures in tragic
and unfortunate ways. If the mother is doing what is best for her baby
(one of the defining marks of maternal love), she will part with her
baby so that it will have the future God intended for him or her to
have… Adoption allows the mother to give her child both a mother and a
father who will love and cherish the child.”

Richard Land calls for a policy that would increase the number of kids in need of adoptive homes by millions.

Land says he understands that there are already 100,000 children
waiting to be adopted in the United States, but he still thinks all 11 million single moms
in the nation should freely surrender their kids. Why? Because he says
the children of single moms are being raised improperly and really
should be given the chance to have a father in their lives, even if they
have to squander their childhood in orphanages waiting to be adopted.
Apparently, Land has no clue how many children that is. Try about 20
million. That’s how many children would be flooding the adoption system
if Land had his way. Earlier in his article, before he completely
insulted single moms, Land tried to make the case for adoption instead
of abortion. He says that women should always choose adoption rather
than seek an abortion. Since an estimated 1.2 million abortions are
performed every year, that would be 1.2 million babies that the already
overworked and underfunded adoption and child services system would have
to deal with each year, in addition to the 20 million Land expects
single moms to give up. Can anyone possibly imagine this turning out
well?
Unless conservatives are literally willing to order their
congressional puppets to open the government wallet and write a gigantic
check (Can anyone honestly imagine that happening?), the system would
implode upon itself. Millions of children would be stranded. And
millions of children would be added to the million-plus children who are
now homeless in America. It would create a crisis of epic proportions, with not enough Christian households around to solve it.

Richard Land’s call carves a dangerous path.

The fact is, abortion is a necessary choice that all women should
have. Sure, they have ability to choose adoption. But it seems that Land
is suggesting forcing that choice upon women. There are already so many
children who have no home, why force women to thrust more children into
that situation? It’s seriously insane.
Furthermore, after single moms read what Land said, it wouldn’t
surprise me if they tarred and feathered him in a public square. As if
conservatives haven’t attacked single mothers enough, this guy is openly
claiming that they don’t raise their children right and that the only
way they can do so is to have a husband. This personally enrages me,
because I was raised by a single mother, as are millions of children
every single year. Is it hard? Sure it is. But does that mean my single
mother wasn’t a fantastic parent who raised me well? Absolutely not.
Land’s call for single moms to willingly surrender their children is a
dangerous signal from religious conservatives. You know how
conservatives are currently cheering for Russia to forcibly take
children away from gay couples? It sounds like conservatives are now one
step closer toward forcibly taking children away from single mothers
here in America. I’m not sure what conservatives call that, but most
sane people would call it kidnapping, which is illegal. Furthermore,
Land’s call to for single moms to give up their kids to Christian
couples is highly suspicious. Clearly, these Christian fundamentalists
would be free to indoctrinate these kids. Basically, Land wants to take
kids away from their single moms so they can be brainwashed with hate,
fear, prejudice, and ignorance. Again, I’m not sure what Land calls
that, but most sane people would call that child abuse.

Conservatives have stopped at nothing to attack single mothers.

This is yet another aspect in the GOP’s war on women. They simply
can’t stand single moms, even though it’s a good bet that many
right-wingers were raised by them. Despite that, conservatives have
stopped at nothing to attack single mothers.
Kansas Republicans are increasing the cost of childcare
across the state to fund abstinence-only programs that don’t work. You
know who is going to be affected by that the most? Single moms. In
Wisconsin, the GOP thinks single moms actually want fatherless children and have compared single motherhood to child abuse. Republicans even blame single moms for the epidemic of gun violence in this country.
But that’s not all. Republican policies such as abstinence-only
programs and their anti-contraception crusade lead to more women
becoming single moms. Not only that, their policies only make the lives
of single mothers harder, thus making it more difficult to care for
their children. GOP efforts to eliminate child care services, preschool,
food stamps, and equal pay for women have only made things harder for
single women.
Here’s a thought. The he-man woman haters within the GOP should get
off their collective asses and begin pushing birth control and
comprehensive sex education. The number of unintended pregnancies would
drop as would the number of abortions. And here’s an even better idea.
What if Republicans actually supported and enacted equal pay for women?
What if they increased child care services and pre-school at the same
time? Those combined efforts would reduce the number of women who become
single mothers via unintended pregnancies. And single mothers would
have a large enough income and the assistance they need to take care of
their kids.

Richard Land’s call is sure to drive more women and their children into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party.

Conservatives have the gall to wonder why women are voting for
Democrats, and yet they attack women on all fronts. Of course, it’s not
going to get any better for the GOP considering one of their own just
insulted millions of single mothers and the millions of children who are
raised by them. On that same note, let’s not forget that young people
are increasing voting against the Republican Party. By attacking their
moms, the GOP is just giving them another reason to vote Democrat.

Richard Land, and conservative men like him, are sexist assholes.

It’s amazing how conservative men can claim to know so much about
child-rearing when they have made it abundantly clear that they expect
women to do all the work. Maybe if Republicans advocated for teaching
men to be good partners with the women they have a child with, more kids
would have a father in their lives. Unfortunately, conservative men
like Richard Land are too busy being sexist assholes, and you can’t
expect sexist assholes to teach other men not to be one. In short, these
anti-women conservative men are totally unfit to raise children and are
totally unqualified to judge single mothers and how they raise theirs.

Monday, November 25, 2013

I live in Texas. I live in the DFW Metroplex, in a small city just east of Dallas - but still in Dallas County.

There's a park on Lake Ray Hubbard. It gets busy on weekends and holidays -- mostly family picnics. Folks also go windsurfing there. So, you often see all sorts of acrobatic, dangerous looking moves. It's cool.

On your way in, there's a stone building that has both a men's and women's restroom. Whenever I'd drive past to go to a local marina, I'd see trucks and "family" sedans parked there or nearby. If two or more cars they would usually be empty. If one there was usually a man seated in his vehicle.

It took me a while, but eventually I realized that bathroom was a place where men would meet up with other like minded men. This in a very "Christian", very "Conservative", very "Republican", very HOMOPHOBIC town. It got so brazen and BUSY that the town eventually closed down this stone building -- erecting iron gates in front of the entrances. Now, two portapotties are outside, one to the left, one to the right.

Oddly enough there are no longer cars or trucks parked outside.

This is TEXAS where most folks have little regard for LGBT people. This is TEXAS where (it seems) most gay guys are married to women, are "good family men", and sneak around to fulfill their (in Texas) "illicit desires". What a damn shame.

By the way, that particular "tea room" really was becoming a "public nuisance" -- there were often families and children playing around the area, that was the only place they could go to relieve themselves -- running into two men going at each other is not my idea of "family fun" --- unless your family is very different from mine.

If these closeted gay men had any integrity they would avail themselves of the very thriving LGBT scene in Dallas. Gay friendly churches, restaurants, bars, clubs, etc, etc. I think that would be much better than sneaking around as if it were the 1950's --- though, in their eyes it might still be the 1950's.

In any case, no matter how repressed, homophobic, frightened, these folks are, it seems they still find a way to fulfill their "illicit desires".

I think it a tragedy for the men, their wives, girlfriends, and children (if any). Don't you think a world where reality prevails would be much better than the one where so many folks are stone liars, pretending to be something they are not, and never were?

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Just a little note from "Right Wing Watch". Follow link to original and check out the pictures -- it shows how pathetic these folks are. Why we still listen to all their rhetoric is beyond me. I suspect a lot of the gun show vendors pay lip service to the more radical yahoos simply because they do not want to jeopardize any of their sales. Of late I've noticed how there seems to be the beginnings of a backlash against the cadre misguided "Patriots" -- the ones who want to blow up the USA for still insane reasons.
----------------------------------------------------------------http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/larry-klayman-rally-overthrow-obama-draws-slightly-fewer-millions-expected

Larry Klayman predicted
that his rally calling for the overthrow of President Obama would draw
“millions to occupy Washington D.C.” and that those millions would
“occupy parks, sidewalks, public areas” until the president leaves
office. In the end, no more than a hundred people showed up for today’s
big event.
Nevertheless, Klayman told Tea Party activists that he is still
confident that the Reclaim American Now rally will force the president
to resign and that grateful Americans will beseech Klayman and his
allies to organize a new Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Larry Klayman predicted
that his rally calling for the overthrow of President Obama would draw
“millions to occupy Washington D.C.” and that those millions would
“occupy parks, sidewalks, public areas” until the president leaves
office. In the end, no more than a hundred people showed up for today’s
big event.
Nevertheless, Klayman told Tea Party activists that he is still
confident that the Reclaim American Now rally will force the president
to resign and that grateful Americans will beseech Klayman and his
allies to organize a new Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
- See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/larry-klayman-rally-overthrow-obama-draws-slightly-fewer-millions-expected#sthash.UOzBW6zj.dpuf

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

This from "The Rude Pundit" -- please read it. Then, can ANYONE tell me how cutting SNAP is in any way good for the economy?
----------------------------------------------------------------------http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com/

11/05/2013

In Brief: A Personal Take on Cuts in Food Stamps:
A little dose of the real life of real peoplereally on public assistance, from rude reader SMV in Wisconsin:

"I am on SNAP [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] for the
first time. I'm am a very educated, working person who lost the
equivalent of my mortgage when the economy tanked in 2008-2009. That is,
when the lying weasels and vampires in the banking/financial industries
poisoned the country's economic circulatory system. I was OK before
Lehman Bros. died. Then--POOF. Not OK.

"My work [as an editor] has nearly disappeared. I cashed in my IRA to
pay for basics. I'm nearly out of that, living on 103% of poverty level,
which actually doesn't allow me to buy both food and heat."

"So I applied. I got the most a single adult can get in
Wisconsin:$200/month. That's less than $6.50/day. I was notified that
the amount for November would be reduced by 11.00 because of the
stupidity in Congress. That is, Congress took away two days of my food
budget. The monthly amount only lasts about two weeks and I use it to
buy protein, so I at least have that every day.

"I got energy assistance for heat. I was lucky to find info and an
appointment before it was all gone. My house is very small, so the grant
will actually heat it. I won't have to keep the thermostat at 50 and
wear snowpants in my house for the next 4 months(as I did one winter).

"I'm not a lazy stupid slacker. I'm not a 'taker,' not a moocher. I'm a
person who can't find a job, who can't make enough money to make it
anymore. I'm 57 and have realized, after more than 100 applications and
even 12 interviews, that no matter how talented or educated or motivated
I am, no one will hire me because I am 57.

"So I try to put together a living any way I can. (I can sell scrap
steel for 10 cents a pound, I discovered last week.) I'm taking
graduate courses (with tuition grants from the feds) for ESL
certification. Maybe I'll have a job by the end of 2014. In the
meantime, life's a SNAP: a kind of government weight and self-esteem
loss plan.

"I think the Republican Hate-the-Poor cohort should try to live on
$6.50/day for a week or so. Wouldn't even cover two visits to
Starbucks."

When you are spit out of the middle class by the capitalist monster,
it's a short trip to America's garbage heap of the disempowered.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Here's a little something from "The Rude Pundit" -- read it. Think about it. Then do whatever you can (legally) to change what's going on in Washington, and in so many statehouses. People will starve. Crime will go up. Anger will simmer until it's rage. All we have to do is be Americans. Do what Americans have always done in the past. Help those with less than us and stop being so proud of being obscenely rich. It's unbecoming to a real American, to someone who knows our history and loves our nation. These plutocrats are going to fall.

GOP Decides Slow Starvation of the Poor Will Ensure Them Victory:
The Rude Pundit thinks that the day starts for most Republicans in
Congress like this (and, in this scenario, the Republican is a male):
After waking up and jacking off to the Syrian chemical weapon attack
videos (especially the ones of the gagging children), Dick Republican
showers, scrubbing his skin with a Brillo pad; he shits out a tight
little turd ball; and he shaves his face so close that his beard is
afraid to grow. He drinks a cup of coffee, punches his wife in the tit,
backhands his two children across the face, and heads out to the car
waiting for him. On his way to work, he has the driver go through the
shittiest areas of DC, like Anacostia or Congress Heights. He stares
through the tinted windows at the poverty and deprivations of the people
there, fondling himself the whole time, thinking about how much he just
wants to take a flamethrower to entire blocks in front of him. He
ponders how much their suffering gets him off. He gets an idea on how to
fuck with the poor today, and he texts it to the Heritage Foundation or
one Koch-run superpac or another. When he gets approval from those in
charge of him, usually by emoticon because they're so goddamned busy, he
knows he's ready to run with it.

For how else, in any way that we could define as "rational," could a
member of Congress not just allow the food stamp program to get a cut by
$5 billion tomorrow (because a recession stimulus program is ending) but also vote in favor of slashing the program in half, by $40 billion over ten years, as the House GOP did in September? The only way it makes any sense at all is if hurting people in poverty was like porn for Republicans.

You wanna know what class warfare actually looks like? It ain't telling
the rich pukes with houses in the Hamptons that they might have to buy a
couple less cases of Chateau de Suckanass Grand Cru for their parties
next summer so we can have bridges that don't fall down. No, it's
telling a family with disabled kids that they have to figure out how to
fucking eat starting next week. It's slashing a program where 87% of the recipients "live in households with children, seniors, or people with disabilities." It's making people decide if they want to eat or have heat during the winter in order to keep the overpriced wine market well-financed.

Republicans want the usual worthless bullshit: drug tests and work rules
for participants. Of course, they want this without providing child
care, health care, job training, or, you know, jobs for people, as if
somehow this will all just magically materialize for people once their
kids are starving at Christmas, just like Jesus wanted them to.

If you need a face to put with your bile and disdain, well, you could
pretty much toss all the Republicans you despise up there: Paul Ryan, Steve King, Marsha Blackburn.

But let's narrow it down to this cockface: Frank Lucas of the completely chimpfuck insane state of Oklahoma. The chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Lucas crowed
like he just ejaculated in a donkey's anus when the House passed the
cuts. Only 6% of the people in his district receive food stamps, so, you
know, fuck them.

When the first food riots happen, probably sometime around Thanksgiving,
let's make sure that these brave Republicans are manning the
barricades. Sure, they might end up eaten as meat by the end, but that's
more good than they've done in Congress.

Fear
And Loathing: American
conservatives' dislike for poor people – witness their current
drive to dismantle the food stamp program, the refusal of 26
Republican governors to accept the no-cost expansion of Medicaid
coverage under Obamacare, and their unthinking rejection of Obamacare
in total – is mainly based on fear. Some small part of their
abhorrence of the poor may stem from sophomoric idealization of 'free
markets' and the idea that those who fail to succeed must be
defective, even more of it is the desire to elevate oneself over
others, but a great deal of it is simple racism.

Victory:
The Congress has managed to cut nearly a million undeserving,
slothful veterans from the food stamp rolls, effective Friday. That
leaves about 46 million Americans on the dole, as the number
receiving food stamps continues to increase, even as employment
slowly recovers – another sign that millions of working Americans
don't make enough to feed their families. 76% percent of SNAP
households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person.
These vulnerable households receive 83 percent of all SNAP benefits.
Kicking those veterans off will really save money.

Positively
Negative: US consumer
confidence fell sharply in October, we were less optimistic about the
current situation, and are decidedly gloomier about the future.
Yeah, recovery.

Push/Shove:
No matter how much the Fed would like inflation to be higher,
without putting money in the hands of consumers – a direct stimulus
- it cannot succeed. Flooding the world with money does them little
good if the money is not used (borrowed) by companies to expand their
output, and a company does not make more widgets if it does not see
customers for those widgets. As long as the customer doesn't have
the money (or sufficient credit) to buy the widget, the cash just
piles up in asset heaps, uselessly.

etc., etc., etc.

What in heaven can I write about this stuff without just repeating what so many other folks have already written? Those who dispute these FACTS do so out of some sort of belief and faith. Neither common sense nor actual facts can sway their beliefs --- after all, a whole lot of folks still think Obama is: the anti-Christ, a Muslim, a communist, a Fascist, or a Fascist,Communist, Muslim, Tyrant. The fact he has been elected twice, and cleaned the clock of his opponents both times seems to mean nothing to these folks. Do you think RACISM might have a bit to do with all this crap?

Barton:
It's Not Global Warming, It's The Judgment Of God - See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-its-not-global-warming-its-judgment-god#sthash.V70pJNH5.dpuf

Barton:
It's Not Global Warming, It's The Judgment Of God - See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-its-not-global-warming-its-judgment-god#sthash.V70pJNH5.dpuf

Barton:
It's Not Global Warming, It's The Judgment Of God - See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/barton-its-not-global-warming-its-judgment-god#sthash.V70pJNH5.dpuf

Thursday, October 24, 2013

By the way - just a little personal note: I had a really nasty toothache and infection for the last two weeks. Finally went to a dentist yesterday and had the problem tooth extracted. Now operating on Vicodin and penicillin - at least for another day. Also discovered I need a lot of work -- including at least three more extractions -- oh happy day! I had a bridge break recently, followed by this toothache (not related to the bridge), followed by the x-rays that showed how messed up my mouth really is. Perhaps I'll have "pearly whites" by the time I die.

Always remember, the sign up for "Obamacare" has been handled by PRIVATE INDUSTRY - the magic thing that is "more efficient" than Government. The ONLY thing it's more efficient at is spending huge sums on lobbyists in order to stay in business.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Of late I find myself unable to watch or listen to any "news" shows. Nor can I abide any of the "pundits". As a result, I've been watching stuff like the DIY (Do It Yourself) Channel.

Among the shows is one about "Man Caves". "Man Caves"?? What in hell is that? Is it a supposedly "grown up" version of a boys club house, where no "stinky girls" are allowed? Is it another step in the attempt to make men consumers of more and more toys? A further attempt to keep them "boys" and not really men -- no matter how much they protest they ARE MEN!!

I remember when well-to-do men had a library or a den. Then as we began the attempt to have real families they were called things like "rumpus rooms", finally morphing into family rooms.

I guess that whole "family" thing cuts down on consumption - so, now any decent middle class home has a living room, dining room, family room, eat-in-kitchen, untold numbers of bedrooms, and bathrooms -- maybe even a library and a studio. The newest addition is the "Man Cave" -- which is where the homosocial man-child goes to watch "his" sports, play "his" games and pretend no stinky girls are allowed.

The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling
(with disastrous economic consequences), and no resolution is in sight.
How did this happen?

The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting
can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann
and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,”
the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme;
contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime;
scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of
facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its
political opposition.”

But there’s one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders
are indeed ideologically extreme, but they’re also deeply incompetent.
So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.

To see what I’m talking about, consider the report
in Sunday’s Times about the origins of the current crisis. Early this
year, it turns out, some of the usual suspects — the Koch brothers, the
political arm of the Heritage Foundation and others — plotted strategy
in the wake of Republican electoral defeat. Did they talk about
rethinking ideas that voters had soundly rejected? No, they talked
extortion, insisting that the threat of a shutdown would induce
President Obama to abandon health reform.

This was crazy talk. After all, health reform is Mr. Obama’s signature
domestic achievement. You’d have to be completely clueless to believe
that he could be bullied into giving up his entire legacy by a defeated,
unpopular G.O.P. — as opposed to responding, as he has, by making
resistance to blackmail an issue of principle. But the possibility that
their strategy might backfire doesn’t seem to have occurred to the
would-be extortionists.

Even more remarkable, in its way, was the response of House Republican
leaders, who didn’t tell the activists they were being foolish. All they
did was urge that the extortion attempt be made over the debt ceiling
rather than a government shutdown. And as recently as last week Eric
Cantor, the majority leader, was in effect assuring his colleagues
that the president will, in fact, give in to blackmail. As far as
anyone can tell, Republican leaders are just beginning to suspect that
Mr. Obama really means what he has been saying all along.

Many people seem perplexed by the transformation of the G.O.P. into the
political equivalent of the Keystone Kops — the Boehner Bunglers?
Republican elders, many of whom have been in denial about their party’s
radicalization, seem especially startled. But all of this was
predictable.

It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no
longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is
climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to
believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies.

For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and
realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere
else. But this wasn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, the party’s attitude
toward policy — we listen only to people who tell us what we want to
hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news — was bound to infect
political strategy, too.

Remember what happened in the 2012 election — not the fact that Mitt
Romney lost, but the fact that all the political experts around him
apparently had no inkling that he was likely to lose. Polls
overwhelmingly pointed to an Obama victory, but Republican analysts
denounced the polls as “skewed”
and attacked the media outlets reporting those polls for their alleged
liberal bias. These days Karl Rove is pleading with House Republicans to
be reasonable and accept the results of the 2012 election. But on election night
he tried to bully Fox News into retracting its correct call of Ohio —
and hence, in effect, the election — for Mr. Obama.

Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn’t
enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it’s still a party dominated by
wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts. And now
that party’s leaders have bungled themselves into a corner.

Everybody not inside the bubble realizes that Mr. Obama can’t and won’t
negotiate under the threat that the House will blow up the economy if he
doesn’t — any concession at all would legitimize extortion as a routine
part of politics. Yet Republican leaders are just beginning to get a
clue, and so far clearly have no idea how to back down. Meanwhile, the
government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a
terrible thing.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Oh dear, I guess those Colorado Republicans didn't quite figure on this. Then again, if their homes weren't destroyed they might just tell you to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". Same guys who voted against giving any help to the Northeast after Sandy now want no DEMAND help for their folks.

As the government shutdown puts a strain
on military members across the country, the Colorado National Guard has
furloughed 650 people, some of whom were working to rebuild communities
devastated by last month’s historic flooding. But the state isn’t
letting the furloughs stand in the way of flood rebuilding.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Tuesday
he will use state funds to pay the 120 National Guard members working
on flood recovery — workers who are normally paid by FEMA. The daily
cost of the workers is estimated at $40,000 to $80,000,
and until the government reopens, that money will come from the
state’s emergency-relief fund. Once the shutdown ends, the state hopes
to get reimbursed for about 75 percent of the National Guard expenses by
FEMA — the rest of the money will have to come from state and local government funds. Colorado still hopes
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will reclassify the National Guard
members as essential, so that the state doesn’t have to foot the bill
for long.
“We can’t afford to lose one day in rebuilding areas destroyed or
damaged by the floods,” Hickenlooper said. “Our National Guard troops
are an invaluable part of the team working on the recovery. We need them
to stay on the job.”
If the government shutdown drags on, it’s still unclear
how Colorado will deal with the 450 Guard members from Utah, Kansas and
Wyoming who are scheduled to arrive in the state in waves in the coming
months. The state is hoping to get at least one passable lane open in
all major highways by Dec. 1, a goal that could be delayed if the
shutdown creates further kinks in National Guard aid.
But for right now, outside of the National Guard questions that still
remain, rebuilding is going as planned in Colorado. Federal disaster
relief from FEMA is still coming in to the state, as FEMA spokesperson
Dan Watson assured earlier this week. Watson said there are 1,000 FEMA workers on the ground in Colorado, helping Colorado citizens recoup after the disaster. And since state officials are currently tracking
all oil and gas spills as a result of the flood, that work isn’t likely
to be affected by the shutdown. Colorado’s government has not shut
down.
Rebuilding from Superstorm Sandy, too, is expected to continue largely as planned
during the shutdown. But disaster cleanup in other areas may face more
of a challenge. California’s massive Rim fire is now 92 percent
contained, meaning very little of the fire is still burning. But there
are still hot spots on the ground, and though about 41 percent of U.S. Forest Service employees continue to work — including some firefighters such as the elite “hotshots” crews — it could be hard
for them to purchase the supplies and equipment they need as funding
runs low during the shutdown. And since states like Colorado could see
more wildfires this fall, a decrease in firefighters and funding leaves
them, as one local sheriff said, in a precarious position.

The
Big Sleep: Senator Rand
Paul (Mental Giant-KY) who slept through last year's elections and
the debates leading up to passage of the ACA in March 2010, justifies
the government shutdown because “We haven’t had a big debate
about Obamacare since it passed in Congress.” Well, it passed,
dummy.

Möbeus
Stripped: There is but
one 'side' to the shutdown, "checks
and balances" is not what's going on here. Republicans -
unable to accept their defeat, unable to accept that there's a
Democrat in their
White House, unable to accept the idea that poor people may actually
benefit from the goddamed too big government, unable
to accept the basic concepts of democracy - are solely to blame
for the shutdown. They would destroy the country rather than share
it with the rest of us.

Naming
Names: Among those
companies too damned cheap to provide healthcare to their employees
are Forever 21, Trader Joe's, Seaworld, and Home Depot. They are
cutting employees to less than 30 hours a week so they won't have to
pay for health insurance – instead throwing the workers on the
public dole for their healthcare needs. Corporate welfare. Don't go
there. Don't shop there.

To
Serve & Protect:
Two Chattanooga cops, whose defense for punching, tazing and beating
a halfway-house resident so savagely they broke his nose and both his
legs as he lay on the floor begging them to stop, was that their
victim "was almost sitting up a little bit”, have gotten their
jobs back after a local judge ruled their actions were “not ideal”
but not sufficient to “ruin the lives (of) two otherwise
unblemished and promising police officers?" Another reason to
avoid Tennessee.

Bang
Bang You're Stupid: A school system in Florida suspended an
8-year-old boy for pretending that his finger and tumb were a gun
while playing cops and robbers on the school playground. He didn't
even say 'Bang, Bang, you're dead.” With any luck, the
administrators involved will lose their jobs and the school system
lose the lawsuit. Stupidity is not a defense.

Fiesta!
Rep. David Schweikert (Millionaire-AZ) says that shutting down the
government and sending 800,000 federal employees to bed without
supper “is my idea of fun”.

This,
Just In: Reports claim
that the War on Drugs failed. Not so; look at how much money was
made from the pretense, equipment, manpower, money-laundering
profits, privately run prisons, careers, payoffs. Nah, you just
didn't get the memo.

About Me

I'm just another old woman who has had wide ranging interests for a long time,
These include fishing, shooting, reading, cooking, and all manner of (mostly) left wing politics.
Born and bred in New York - Queens, to be precise - I now live in Texas, another state that folks seem to attack (like N.Y.) without ever having been here.
I'm also a fan of most sports -- esp. baseball, esp. the New York Yankees.
Originally a New York Giants (baseball) fan, I was crushed when they moved. It took many years wandering in the wilderness before I returned to baseball. I's all Wade Boggs fault. When I watched that artist, my love for baseball resurfaced. Since he was then a Yankee -- it had to be the Yankees.
The Mets pretended they had spiritual ties to the old Brooklyn Dodgers - no Giant fan could go there.
I tried - couldn't do it.